What's the least time consuming, but most effective, free promotion method? I've been reading through this forum for a while. Every time I do, I find good information Is there any consensus on what is the least time-consuming free marketing technique? What do you think is it? Why? I focus a lot on blog comments, but the wide implementation of nofollow has caused that to not help PR.
Hire some site submit service. That may cost some money but is the most effective way to get lot of free links. It costs some money but no time on your part.
I doubt you can get something that's free, takes no time and is effective. You might get two of these at most. It also depends on what you are trying to promote. You need to give away something of value to your target market; either information, training or fun. Blogs or software games/utilities have no material cost but they take time to produce. I like competitions that can have a relatively low cost prize, say a mobile phone, but enough to make people play. You can re-brand standard software and handle all of the entries automatically via email to spreadsheet conversions. That's about the best compromise I can suggest.
I'm not asking what takes no time. I'm asking what generally gives a webmaster the most amount of promotion for the amount of time he puts into it. For a hypothetical example, say a person had no money but had 5 hours a day to put towards marketing & promotion. What would that person need to do to get the most out of those 5 hours? Contests are great and cheap, but not free.
You're asking the question everybody wants the answer to, the problem is, their really isn't a good answer.
If you have those 5 hours a day, why not write articles and submit them to article directories? This will give you a ton of backlinks. ~ Sirius Lin
Honestly, that's like asking what's the easiest way to lose weight the fastest. It just doesn't exist.
I like social bookmarking but I also like Free Classifieds for the least time consuming method. Best, Ana
You also have to consider your goals. Are you building or repairing a company image? Are you trying to increase sales? Are you trying to generate buzz? Are you trying to gain trustworthiness or legitimacy?
This is a tricky question, but not impossible to answer. First I want to bring some thoughts about this how to market your product without spending time, I've done it, and there's million other marketers and business who have done it. Word-of-mouth / viral marketing. If you manage to build something that's worth talking... then people will come to your site. My blog gets lots of traffic from some game development forums where people are mentioning my site. I want the site to grow and word-of-mouth has been one key for getting traffic. But to get people to talk about your product, you must have a darn good product - or be somehow unique. One guy painted the world's first white playstation 3 (or was it red) and got massive amount of traffic - because the story was new, unique, fun. It might got into news or something, but I believe this guy was focusing on doing the product and letting others do the marketing. That's how one can market the product. The second way to market your product is to get other people to market it... like some other people to write your blog, or somehow other people bringing you traffic. It's not necessarily easy and might require a solid base - but the main idea is to get other people to do your work. It's bit like what those investors do: they invest in companies where other people work to earn money for the investors. Your later reply gives more room for the answer: 5 hours per day sounds good, and I believe one of the best ways (depending what you do) is to offer some extremely unique and fine content that people like to see. If you write an extremely valuable blog post and then put effort to let other people know about the article, it might start spreading in the blogosphere like a snowball - and bring traffic to your site. I suppose experts call use the infamous term "linkbait" for this - although I see it as an act to give as much to other people, and then seeing results. They are not? What about getting other people to give prizes? I had a pretty fun spam contest on my site and got other people to give the prizes, that way it costs you nothing. Naturally I gave publicity & wrote additional blog posts about this guy's product, to make sure he benefited from the deal as well. These have been bit "high-level" suggestions, so I try to summarize my opinions on the best & least time consuming & free efforts. * Getting other people to update & maintain & promote your site (not easy to achieve) * Having extraordinary product/service/website/content - without this, it's really hard to battle no matter how much you promote your site. * Giving stuff worth mentioning: great articles, free services... anything that makes people talk * Use of press releases or sending news to major sites (can be USA today, can be Fark.com, can be any major site) - and make sure you have a great story to tell
Go viral! Learn every little trick about it, like creating your own short ebooks or modifying someone else's.
First of all, that is plagiarism - a very bad practice. It fights against the mentality that's needed to bring long-term success: focusing on giving, not on getting. In the worst case it would not only ruin your reputation but might even end up you getting a lawsuit.
Article submission - free, quick to implement, great results Free classifieds - free, wide exposure, can get specific keyword searches Writing great content - rss feeds will be picked and disseminated on blog directories.
Hm. I would have to say a combination of article marketing and forum posting. That's what I focus most of my time on. Forum posting isn't that hard, as all you do is contribute to topics related to your site and instant link (assuming the forum doesn't attach the nofollow attribute). As for article marketing, it is effective in several different ways. People are looking for information, and they want it free, and they want it now. Articles help people out, and it may cause them to check out the site that is in the resource box, which could lead to a sign-up/sale/etc. Other webmasters and bloggers need new content, so they may republish your article on their site/blog, and they are obligated to include your resource box, which contains your link. Your link can spread like a virus throughout the internet this way. Also you will be seen as an authority in your field when you write articles, so people will be more inclined to trust you and your business. just my 2 cents